Consolation Prize: Indian American Usha Chilukuri Vance Set to Become America’s Second Lady
- The daughter of Indian immigrants from Andhra Pradesh, whom President-elect Trump in his acceptance speech referred to as “the remarkable and beautiful” Usha, grew up in a San Diego suburb.
As hopes of Indian American Kamala Devi Harris becoming the President of United States faded Tuesday night, America woke up to the prospect of an Indian American second lady — Usha Chilukuri Vance “the remarkable and beautiful” wife of vice president-elect J.D. Vance. Dressed in a black off-shoulder dress, last night she proudly stood by her husband at the Trump campaign’s headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida. It seemed like the usually unassuming Usha is aware that all eyes will be on her now.
Usha is the daughter of Indian immigrants and grew up in a San Diego suburb. Her parents, Chilukuri Radhakrishna (Krish) and Lakshmi Chilukuri are originally from Andhra Pradesh and moved to the U.S. in 1980. An attorney, she worked as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, a job she quit the day after Trump chose Vance as his running mate.
Usha met Vance at Yale while they were both law students at Yale. In a 2017 interview with NBC News, she aid she was attracted to Vance in part because of his positive attitude. “He felt very different.” They married in 2014. The couple has three children — two boys and a girl — Ewan, 7, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2.
In her introductory speech at the Republican Convention, she said her middle-class upbringing was very different to her husband’s experience growing up poor in Ohio.
“That J.D. and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry is a testament to this great country,” Mrs Vance said. “It is also a testament to J.D.”
Since then, much has been written about Usha’s Hindu faith and her political views.
A registered Democrat before 2014, a Times profile on Usha noted she has “largely kept her political views private and has not been very vocal about her positions.” Citing voter records, the Times says she was registered as a Republican in Ohio and “participated in the state’s Republican Senate primary in which her husband was a candidate.”
Jai Chabria, a Republican strategist for J.D. Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign and a family friend, told The Washington Post that Usha’s “views of the former president have changed, mirroring the evolution of her husband, once a fierce Trump critic.” Usha has had “a similar shift in views and fully supports Donald Trump and her husband and will do whatever she can to ensure their victory this NovemHer husband did try to defend her against these attacks, but, going by news reports, he appears to have done more harm than salvage the situation.
Usha was raised as a Hindu and continues to practice the faith. “I did grow up in a religious household, my parents are Hindu, and I think that was one of the things that made them such good parents, that makes them really very good people,” she told Fox News in a recent interview. Vance added during the same interview that his “wife’s faith was a key factor in his decision to re-engage with Christianity later in his life,” which he said Usha has been supportive of.
In a June interview with Fox News alongside her husband, Mrs. Vance talked about being raised in a religious household. “My parents are Hindu and that is one of the things that made them such good parents, that made them really good people. And so I have seen the power of that.”
Vance has often praised Usha in interviews, describing her as a “powerful female voice” and saying that she holds considerable influence over his career. “Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit, and if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud, I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am,” Vance said in an interview on the “Megyn Kelly Show” podcast in 2020. “I’m one of those guys who really benefit from having, like, a sort of powerful female voice on his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that, do that’—it just is important.”
“Look, I love my wife so much,” he told Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM show. “Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been accused — attacked — by some white supremacists over that,” he continued. “But I just — I love Usha. She’s such a good mom, she’s such a brilliant lawyer and I’m so proud of her.”Her experience has “helped give him the perspective that it’s very hard for working families in America,” he added.
His comments come after far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes attacked Usha earlier this month, Ben Blanchet wrote in Huff Post “Who is this guy, really, Feuntes questioned about Vance. “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity,” he wondered.
In a November 2020 profile on the Vances, The Cinemaholic noted that in “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance wrote that “Usha helped him realize that he had baggage from his tumultuous upbringing even after he managed to achieve all his dreams.” She had told him that he had no idea of how to resolve a conflict, he wrote. He feared becoming like his mother, he wrote, but Usha made him see that all he had to do was talk to her to make her see his side of an argument.